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Tasty Tuesday: Grandma Lucy’s Freeze-Dried Chicken

We hadn’t heard of Grandma Lucy’s before our friends at Chewy offered us the opportunity to review them. When the roasted chicken freeze-dried treats arrived, Pierre couldn’t wait to get started trying them out.

One of the things we didn’t realize even through the window on the front of the bag is that these treats are really big. They’re “pet treats” and meant for either cats or dogs, so they’re on the large side.

This isn’t a problem. Just get your human to break them up for you. They were kind of stiff and didn’t come apart easily, probably due to Grandma Lucy’s roasting and freeze-drying process. But if you bend them along the grain of the meat instead of across the grain, they snap apart without too much effort.

Newton: Enough looking at the food. It’s time for eating!

Ashton: Me first! I want one of the big pieces!

Newton: You always go first because if you don’t, you steal everybody else’s, Ashton.

The harder texture meant that Pierre especially didn’t want to eat really big pieces. He preferred they be chunked up into small bits. Otherwise, he would gnaw on the large piece and give up. The rest of us ate any size piece you would give us, because it’s chicken and nothing but chicken. We like when there aren’t any ingredients we can’t pronounce on the label.

The treats are made in the USA, and not just “made in the USA” with ingredients from China, either. The ingredients (all one of them) are originated right here in the US from hormone and antibiotic free meats, so we felt confident about eating these treats.

Newton: Sorry, everyone. You’re going to have to go to Chewy and get your own. I like these so much that this bag is all mine!

We give these roasted chicken freeze-dried treats a big paws up.

FTC Disclosure: We received these treats for free in exchange for our review, but it did not influence anything we say. All posts on our blog reflect our unbiased opinions.

Jackson Galaxy Petmate Collection Review and Giveaway

The nice people at Petmate reached out to us and asked if we would be interested in trying out the line of toys designed by cat expert Jackson Galaxy. You probably know him from his television program on Animal Planet, My Cat From Hell, but he has been observing and explaining cat behavior for a long time. This is his first line of toys for cats, and we were pretty excited to check them out.

Two of the toys in the package were the Mojo Maker – Air Prey and the Mojo Maker – Ground Prey These are both variations on the “cat fishing pole” design you’re probably familiar with. Both of them use telescoping wands rather than long, fixed-length ones, which is great for storage, and also for adapting them for play depending on the size of the area you are in.

The Mojo Maker – Ground Prey has a sturdy wire connecting it to the wand. The head peep liked this because she thought it would survive repeated attacks and wouldn’t break like a string would if we chewed on it. It arrived partially unassembled — the lure wasn’t attached to the little loop at the end of the wire. This didn’t look like a big deal, since the loop is kind of like the end of a safety pin, but she really struggled to get it open to put the lure on, then to close it again. This is probably good because a cat can’t accidentally open it up and then cut or pinch themselves with it, but if you’re gifting it to somebody with arthritis, make sure you help them assemble it so that they can use it.

Once it was put together, we loved chasing it around. Because it’s on a wire, it’s easy to have the little caterpillar-looking thing on the end lie still, then wiggle invitingly. Pierre really liked that. Once he had hold of it, he didn’t want to let go!

The Mojo Maker – Air Prey is a little different. At the end of the telescoping wand is a retractable string with a feather lure on the end. The lure is attached with the same safety-pin end that the Ground Prey version is, but this one came already attached and ready to play. And boy, did we play!

We have a video below showing a little of how much we enjoyed the Mojo Maker – Air Prey.

(If the video doesn’t display above, you can view it directly on YouTube.)

In the video, you can see that Pierre quickly started to figure out that he could use the cat tree for extra height when going after the lure.

The video also showed that Ashton will not play with it as long the boys are occupied with it. She usually plays with toys when no one else (especially the boys) are around, and she got some serious pouncing in on the Mojo Maker – Air Prey later, when they were not keeping it to themselves.

We also got a Twisted Kicker to try out. This is made of a velvet-type material and must be stuffed with some premium catnip, because we couldn’t resist grabbing, kicking, and biting it. Newton was so excited that he got it soaked with drool, but that didn’t stop Pierre from trying out his moves on it, too.

The last two toys we got in the package are kind of special. They’re called Natural Playtime.

Even though we never seem to touch them when any humans are looking, they seem move around at night, every night, on their own. Of course, this is because we love to play with them on our own at night. We can’t explain why we don’t play with them during the day — or while the camera is around — but they are in a new location every day, so they are fun, but we don’t like to be caught having fun with them.

In case you can’t tell, we give the Jackson Galaxy Petmate collection toys our high paws of approval!

FTC Disclosure: We received the Jackson Galaxy Petmate toys for free as part of our agreement to run this review and giveaway. It didn’t influence what we say or our opinions. All opinions expressed on this site are our own.

Taste Test Tuesday: Turkey Liver Munchies from Primal

Pierre: This month, our friends at Chewy offered to let us try out freeze-dried liver munchies from Primal Pet Foods. We were pretty excited about these because they’re made of only one thing: freeze dried turkey liver. No vegetables, no fillers, no added salt or sugar, no chemicals that cats can’t pronounce. I like how that sounds!

Pierre: So let’s get on with the important part, the tasting!

Ashton: Hey, that looks like a really big piece. Aren’t you going to share?

Pierre: These turkey liver pieces are freeze-dried as-is, so they are different sizes, and some of them are pretty big.

Ashton: I’ll take the big ones!

Pierre: I think the big ones are meant for dogs. But don’t worry, they are easy to break up with human fingers. And when I got a large piece, it was easy to bite into and chew up. As a freeze-dried meat, it kind of crumbles, so it can make a little bit of a mess when you break it into smaller pieces. Don’t forget to be tidy and lick the crumbs off the floor.

Ashton: Is it finally my turn to taste one?

Pierre: Go ahead. I had my taste. It was pawesome.

Pierre: Don’t take the whole finger, Ashton!

Newton: Now for me, right?

Ashton: Hey! Over here. More for me. I’m turning on the cute, see?

Ashton: Mine!

Newton: I was starting to think that I wasn’t going to get any. Yum!

Pierre: We gave Primal freeze-dried liver munchies twelve enthusiastic paws up! And the head peep did, too, because it’s a healthy, species-appropriate treat that we all agreed on.

FTC Disclosure: We received these treats for free from Chewy.com. This didn’t influence what we say; all opinions expressed on this site are our own.

Tuesday Taste Test: Nature’s Variety Instinct Raw Bites

Newton: Some of you may remember that Ashton mentioned the other day that we have been on a long dietary journey from kibble to canned food, and the nice folks at Nature’s Variety asked if we wanted to try their raw food, Instinct Raw Bites.

Nature’s Variety makes three formulas of raw frozen food: chicken, duck, and rabbit. We chose chicken and duck, since we big fans of poultry canned foods. We thought the transition would be easier that way.

The Instinct raw bites arrive frozen, so you get them from a store that sells them from a freezer and store them in your own freezer, right next to the ice cream.

Ashton: Hey, you didn’t tell me we get ice cream as part of this, too!

Newton: Not right now, Ashton. We’re talking about Nature’s Variety Instinct Raw Bites right now, not ice cream. The raw bites are about the size of kibbles. We compared them to the size of some of our old kibbles for comparison. This is nice because it’s a familiar form factor and doesn’t seem as foreign to us. They look like this when they are right out of the package:

Newton: When they’re right out of the package, I will sniff them, but won’t eat them because they’re frozen.

Natures_variety_instinct_raw_bites_size_sm

Size comparison to kibble

The instructions on the package say that you should thaw them for fifteen minutes, then they will be ready to eat. After 15 minutes, I will lick them, but the remaining ice crystals mean that I still won’t eat them. Ashton will try to eat them, but drops them back into the dish. Both of us found that you need to wait at least 30 minutes at room temperature for them to be thawed enough to eat.

Because it’s a raw food product, the recommendation from Nature’s Variety is taking away any uneaten food after 30 minutes, so that was cutting things pretty close, for recommended safety’s sake.

One of the things the head peep discovered during our test was that if she overslept even a little bit, she didn’t have 30 minutes to spare in the mornings. She quickly realized that she needed a backup plan so that she didn’t have hungry, angry cats!

In addition to making sure we had backup canned food in case of not having time to thaw, we tested something that Nature’s Variety doesn’t recommend at all: thawing of the food in the refrigerator before eating it. Like typical cats who don’t like playing by the rules, both Ashton and I loved it best that way. Pierre doesn’t accept new food readily, so he wasn’t convinced even with defrosted food, but we’ll continue to work on him.

Ashton: I’ll eat Pierre’s portion! Hey, are you going to finish that?

Newton: You better believe I am! I love Nature’s Variety Instinct Raw Bites, and they have made me a big fan of eating species-appropriate raw food!

Disclosure: We received our raw bites at no charge from Nature’s Variety. We also received a small fee to cover the time it takes to cover the time it takes to take photos and write the blog post. Receiving the product and fee did not influence anything we say. All posts on our blog reflect our unbiased opinions.